Google Public Service Search is dead -- Long Live Google Custom Search Engine!

The nav code that I uploaded ages ago to Google Public Service Search is broken. Although Public Service Search will still work, you can't make any changes; Google has discontinued support for administering Public Service Search, directing us to Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) instead.

These CSEs are cool; I've bookmarked several having to do with Transportation Agencies:

• Public Transit Agencies Search Engine
• State DOT Search Engine
• UTC Search Engine
• MPO Search Engine
• LTAP Center Search Engine

Apparently, free embedded search on a site is also managed through CSE.

I used our department account (username systems@techtransfer.berkeley.edu, password the usual) to configure a CSE.

Then on our web server I edited the search code for our pages with the new code (new values for hidden inputs in the search form). If you have your search form laid out in tables, as we do, you need to peer closely at Google's new code and make the necessary modifications by hand, rather than just cut'n'paste.

A big change is that the search results are in an iframe within a page hosted on our server.

I used the CSE control panel to change the appearance of the results, though I've had no luck making them narrower to fit inside our nested tables.

The page for our CSE can be found by logging in at:

http://www.google.com/coop/manage/cse